


Guardian Angel

by Ranowa



Series: I Dream of Dying [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Fix-It: s03e03 His Last Vow, Getting Together, M/M, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, john is so tired someone hug him, no disastrous christmas this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24653173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is not an angel. John never asked him to be one.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: I Dream of Dying [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729027
Comments: 20
Kudos: 195





	Guardian Angel

**Author's Note:**

> And at long last, this series is finally complete! It has been a real joy to write, the response has blown me away, and I finally was able to indulge my own need to just white-out HLV into a nice fix-it (and all of the season four mess that followed it). Thank you vey much to everyone who has kudosed or commented along the way, and I hope you enjoy the final resolution and have a good day :)

The sofa in 221B is a very good sofa.

It's a solid, heavy, dependable piece of furniture. It's just long enough for him to stretch out on, and the cushions are ideal for him curling with his back to the room and throwing the perfect strop. When he lies on his back or his side, he lets an arm dangle to trace the deep furrows in the left leg, from that one time when Sherlock had had a sword fight with a client turned thief. (To which John's stunned fit of a reaction had been absolutely transcendent, and archived safely in the palace.)

The sofa in 221B is also, somewhat coincidentally, Sherlock's new home, and will remain as such for the entire rest of his life.

John looks at him from across the room, his arms full of prescriptions and a new medical kit. Even with his hands busy with sterile alcohol solution and latex gloves, he still can't help but look the slightest bit amused. "Happy to be home?"

He flattens himself into the sofa. Lovely, perfect sofa. Sherlock molds himself into the warm, unspeakably glorious cushion, underneath the soft, no-longer-despicable-hospital blanket. _I am never leaving again._

"I am never leaving again."

"Sure you're not. And pigs fly."

"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock sighs. It's muffled into the pillow, the lovely, perfect pillow, _his_ pillow, and he's bone-tired, sore and cold all over, and the cab ride home has moved a sharp throbbing back into his chest, and he has never felt better in his life.

The flat looks perfect. John's chair is still where he'd left it, that night he'd been carried off in an ambulance, impeding the path to the kitchen. The Union Jack pillow is back there, too, where it belongs. John's laptop is on the desk underneath random bits of paper and debris, turned on and halfway through proofreading a blog post, likely a perfunctory update that the hat detective is recovering well and a request to be left alone in these difficult times. His microscope is waiting in the kitchen, waiting with the acid solution Molly had dropped off at John's request, and his violin case has been dug out of the clutter to rest neatly against the wall.

If John and Mrs. Hudson are trying to recreate what the flat used to look like before Sherlock took an ill-advised fall off a rooftop, they have certainly succeeded.

He closes his eyes, presses his face to the pillow's familiar scent, and for just a few seconds, that's all there is.

Then:

"John?"

"Hang on a second. I'm almost-"

"Mycroft got in contact with me last night."

John goes still.

Slowly, carefully, Sherlock sits back upright. The movement alone is enough for a renewed pang in his chest, but John isn't looking at him now, and he's safe to rub at the wound with the heel of his hand and choose his words very exactly. Clearly, John's mind has already gone to the heart of the matter, so an introduction is not necessary. All that is needed is the explanation.

"Magnussen remains a problem," he starts, steepling his fingers. "For all of us. Believe it or not, Mycroft can't state sanction a murder, but it's in everyone's best interest if Magnussen is removed from the equation."

John stays still. His back to Sherlock, he stares down now at the heating up kettle, gone very tense and stiff, like a coiled spring. He's listening, and he already doesn't like what he's hearing.

Sherlock licks his lips, and goes on.

"He's assigning the problem to Mary. Unofficially, of course. If she is able to handle the problem in such a way that it can not be proved or traced back to her, then she'll have fulfilled her part of the bargain."

It's quiet for several moments again. John is standing military-straight and silent, his hands curling into fists at the counter, breaths a measured, angry pace. "Handle the problem," he repeats flatly. "You mean kill Magnussen."

"Well. Yes." Sherlock tilts his head, watching the way John stands and shifts, trying to read his reaction. "People like Magnussen should be killed. That's what Mary said, in this very room."

He doubts John's issue is any moral proclivity. He shot a man for Sherlock twelve hours after meeting him, and Jeff Hope had been responsible for barely a shred of the havoc and tragedy that plays out at Magnussen's hand.

But for some reason, John still, clearly, is not happy.

"He's also allowing a temporary reprieve, due to the pregnancy," he continues carefully, when John makes it apparent that he is not going to say anything. "Mary will remain in protective custody until the baby is born." It's protection for Sherlock and John- not for her. "At that point, you will be given full custody, pending the successful completion of her mission. Beyond that, Mary appears most focused on retaining her freedom before anything else."

The kettle whistles. John immediately sets about pouring the tea, the cups chiming together as noisily as possible, his every motion radiating discontent. So Sherlock's done something wrong, again.

He'd expected this conversation to be an unpleasant one, at least. He'd already predicted his first night home might very well end in John going for a walk that lasts until morning. Unfortunate, yes.

But John's reaction would be even more unfortunate, if Sherlock kept this from him and waited for him to find out on his own.

Sherlock doesn't want to lie to John anymore.

He doesn't want to lie, and that is why, in direct defiance of his better judgment, he goes on.

"Mary has also expressed a wish for assistance against Magnussen. Justifiably so- after her first failed attempt, he has drastically increased security, and will be watching for her in particular. I'm uniquely qualified to assist, even if only in the planning stages, so-"

John sets both mugs down with an earth-shattering and sudden clatter, so desperately loud that Sherlock can not help it. He flinches. He flinches and is sick to his stomach for it and shuts his mouth.

John stands in the kitchen for the space of three more measured breaths, his shoulders tense, each one a moment of forced calm. When he spins back around it is again with military precision, his eyes gone stormy and cold as he paces back to him, and the look on his face is entirely ex-army doctor.

He holds the tea out. "Drink."

"John-"

"No." John crosses the room again and returns with a tablet of oxycodone, his eyes stern in a glare that belies absolutely no room for argument. "Take this."

"John, I don't-"

"This is your scheduled dose. If you want to talk about skipping that dose, we can have that conversation in a few days. Right now, you're taking it."

John is already, clearly, shaping up for an argument. It's probably not a good thing for Sherlock to try and provoke a second one.

He dry-swallows his argument, and the oxycodone with it.

Ministrations now complete, John turns away to sit down back in his chair, dropping down like a puppet with its strings cut and then his face into his hands. Sherlock's been home five minutes and he already looks like he regrets it, and the feeling sinks in his stomach like a stone.

"Don't do it," John says into his hands. His voice is shaking, very slightly, and his tea is set down with a clatter. "Don't get involved."

And Sherlock _wants_ John to stay, he _wants_ to make him happy and stop being the reason he's miserable and never give him cause to leave ever again, but he's also spent weeks upon weeks being _bored,_ and he just can't. He can't. "It's _a case,_ John," he snaps, "it's not even that! It's just _planning._ Surely I can do that much, still? I'm not allowed to _think too hard,_ lest I give myself an aneur-"

"Shut up." He stares at him, white-faced and still cold as glass, and the mug of tea rattles as if he wants to shatter it. "I don't want you involved because your _plans_ always disregard your own safety. You go out and get yourself nearly killed whenever you get the opportunity, always _just for a case_ , because you don't care what happens to yourself and I don't know how to make you. You go out there against Magnussen and get shot again or god knows what else, and I can't do this anymore, Sherlock. I can not keep watching you die."

Sherlock swallows again. The rock still sits in his stomach, leaden and heavy and nauseating, and... what he's supposed to say?

It's the same uncertain feeling from before. The same disbelief that's dogged him for months, that his life could ever mean that much to John Watson. The way he forgets it, over and over, because he doesn't understand why it does and he doesn't understand why John is here.

It's the uncomfortable knot that formed inside him when John had sat there in his dreadful hospital room, and said _I wanted to kill myself, Sherlock._

Sherlock, however, has never been adept at navigating human sentiment.

"What is this, then?" he rasps, hands steepled and clenched. Because he doesn't know what this is, he doesn't know what John _means,_ and he can't stand it. "An ultimatum? You'll move back out if I don't _behave?_ Because-"

"Don't do this. Just... don't do this now, Sherlock."

John doesn't sound like he wants an argument, this time. He just sounds tired. He sounds and looks just as tired as he has ever since the shooting, and Sherlock is increasingly the cause.

The fight drops out of him, and he sags back down onto his lovely, well-missed sofa.

He's tired, too.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs.

He's not sure he'd ever sincerely apologised for anything in his life, before meeting John. He's not sure he'd even grasped what such a thing could feel like until Moriarty had made good on his oath to burn the heart out of him.

He means it now, and he's meant it ever since coming back from the dead.

But John looks at him, and somehow those two words were all it took to make him soften, that coldness in his face gone and the mug of tea turned in his hands. "It's... okay. Really. I think neither of us want to fight tonight. I just... I need for you to be all right. And I know you can't promise that but- not Magnussen, Sherlock. If Mary or whatever her name is can't handle him on her own, then fine. But unless you can look at me honestly and say that there was no way whatever plan you were thinking up could end in any way badly for you, then stay out of it. Promise me you'll stay out of it."

Sherlock opens his mouth, the words already in his throat, then snaps it shut it again. He wets his lips and as good as confesses it right then and there.

John's smile goes even softer, somehow. He looks almost fond as he shakes his head, turning back to his tea. "That's what I thought."

Sherlock curls himself back closer around his pillow and says nothing.

It wouldn't have ended badly. Of course it was dangerous; how could it not be? Magnussen isn't the sort of person that can be taken down safely sitting behind a desk. Of course there were ways it could've gone wrong, but it's not as if Sherlock enjoys getting hurt or nearly killed. He plans to try and prevent it, and his plan against Magnussen had been the same.

His plans just often wind up awry, and- what's he supposed to do? It's only _transport_ , John, he wants to say; his welfare is immaterial to someone like Magnussen being stopped. He really doesn't care.

But John does care.

And it's selfish, but Sherlock finds he's much more committed to just keeping John _here_ than he is protecting him from any future threat. He'd already protected John in 2012, and this was how it all ended up. He doesn't have it in him to do that again.

So he hugs his pillow, sips his tea, and, after the ride home, is really just too tired to do anything but give in.

He's cold and worn out and tired, and he's tired of _being_ tired. He buries a hand in the nearest blanket, catching the cotton between his thumb and forefinger, and soon finds himself dropping his other hand down to the sword-scarred leg of the sofa.

It's brilliant to be home. It's brilliant that _John_ is home.

But this hateful, loathsome tension is still there between them, and John still looks exhausted, and Sherlock still _feels_ exhausted, and he's starting to realise that there may not be any way to fix it.

He wishes Jim Moriarty and Mary Not-Morstan had never existed at all.

"Mycroft was here," he sighs, scowling at the room at large. John gives him a curious look and Sherlock jabs his head, nodding to the chess game abandoned on his desk. Mycroft had been humoring John- black appears to have been engaged in a strategy to systematically take every piece on the opposing side. "Why was Mycroft here? And why did you let him in?"

"Believe it or not, your brother isn't the antichrist. Though he is still more annoying than you." He folds his hands closer around the mug and frowns at the chess set himself, looking worn. "I don't really know why he came over, to be honest. I think he's just... worried about you."

"You should've told him to piss off. No one asked for him to be _worried."_ He shivers, not because of the cold but something deeper, more primal, and he pulls even deeper into his blanket.

John's clinks his nails on his tea, and the right thing for Sherlock to do, right then and there, is to shut up.

He is _tired._

"He played chess with me when I was in hospital. Before, I mean. While I was... away." It's uncomfortably quiet, and he can feel John's startled eyes on him, even as he refuses to look back. "I was bored and wanted to come home then, too. Sometimes he humored me and let me win."

"While you were away," John repeats carefully. "Is that where you got those scars, then?"

"Yes."

He doesn't bother asking how John knows about them. John spent several weeks working as his doctor and stand-in nurse, while Sherlock was sedated into an almost-coma and breathing on a machine, and then days after that when he was conscious enough to be aware of it, not conscious enough to protest it. Of course John had seen them. John had probably had hours to stare at them uninterrupted, cataloging, diagnosing, and defining each and every one.

John had let it slide without interrogation, then. His concern over these past several weeks had been devoted to making Sherlock as comfortable as possible, not plying him with questions he very clearly did not want to answer. Sherlock had already guessed it would only be a temporary reprieve.

He catches a glimpse of John's face out of the corner of his eye and groans in abject despair. Oh, not _this._ "Don't."

"Sorry?"

"Don't do- _that,"_ he groans, waving a hand to encompass his entire, desperately unhappy visage. "I'm fine. Obviously. And even if I wasn't, there's hardly any way you could have possibly known." Sherlock rubs his face again and tries very hard to shut his overactive brain _off._ "I've been somewhat reliably informed that I deserved your welcoming party, anyway."

But the words must be ill-advised, because John suddenly looks like he wants to clank his mug down again, to be loud and angry and shout at Sherlock. He breathes through his nose instead, the vein his neck throbbing- and it seems this night is going to be an unfortunate one after all.

He's no good at this. Perhaps he never was to begin with but John used to have the patience to put up with it, and then Sherlock made him watch him step into open air and he doesn't care to bother with it anymore.

He burrows back into his nest of blankets and keeps his mouth shut.

"Do you want me to be here, Sherlock?"

Sherlock starts, sending his stomach and hot tea sloshing just over the rim. _What?_ John is staring at him, his face unreadable but unhappy, and Sherlock doesn't know _why_ he'd ever ask such a thing when the answer is so obvious, but-

"Of course I do." He wets his lips again, struggling to swallow. "I told you to move back in, didn't I?"

"After I asked you to."

Frustration swells inside him, frustration and _annoyance,_ now. Idiot. His best friend is an _idiot._ "John, there is presently nothing that I want more than for you to remain my flatmate. The past several years have been the worst of my life precisely because you were not in it. I don't know how to make it any clearer that my happiness appears to be contingent on your continued existence adjacent to mine, given that I started kipping in a drug den the day you got married, but if you want for me to dictate and sign a statement on it do feel free to let me know."

He drags himself to his feet then, suddenly incensed and he can't possibly say why. He slinks to the kitchen with his cup of tea just to set it down and make noise. A moment later he whacks the bottle of oxycodone to the floor, where it's loud and stupidly dramatic and rolls all the way out of his reach to wait at John's feet.

A moment later still, now that he's gone and squandered his fit of pique, he feels rather stupid for it at all. But it's a bit too late to take it back.

John is staring at him from his chair, gone pale and tight-fisted again, his each breath jerking in and out of his chest like it's forced. "You said-" He blinks, stricken. "You said it was for a case!"

"Yes, and I also told you I was dead for two years; I'm a liar, John. You should know that by now." He smiles at him, and by the look on John's face, it comes out every bit as horrible as it feels. "That lie wasn't even a good one. Addicts always find an excuse, don't they? Didn't Mycroft tell you that while you two were playing _chess?"_

Of course it wasn't for a case.

It's never _for a case._

He sits back down against the counter, shoulders down and heart thudding so hard he can feel each pulse inside him. It aches absently and god _damn it,_ he's an idiot. Why did he say that? Why did he ever say that out loud?

John's not going to let that go unanswered, of course. John is a good man and a good doctor, and therefore is going to make this into a _big deal._

He's still looking at him, pale and uncertain- which is better than harping on and on about addiction and the health dangers of cocaine and heroin, Sherlock supposes, but not by much. He works his mouth, hand flexing, and when he gets to his feet it's seems that he's just too full of nervous energy to sit still.

"You're the one who disappeared, not me! I came back from my honeymoon, you knew the date, you booked the bloody plane tickets, and _you_ stayed away! I was waiting, Sherlock-" He rubs his face again with a shaking hand, starting to pace back and forth. "You used to text me ten time a day, you texted me to meet you at Bart's once when I was in _Germany._ I wanted to see you but you never reached out and what was I supposed to do? I thought you were fine! I thought it was like Moriarty all over again- that you were busy and _not-bored_ on your own and just didn't want me to come in and slow you down!"

Sherlock settles back down at the kitchen table, a hand on his microscope. His wonderful, familiar, chemical-scarred table. The pattern of acid stains on one corner, paling the wood; the little furrow he uses to space his test tube rack from his notes. The chemical smell. The claw marks from when he'd needed to examine the exact appearance of glass shards scratched against wood.

He loves this table. It's also a unquantified disaster that isn't serviceable for anything more than being decontaminated and set on fire. But it's still here. He died, and John hates this table because he hates to eat off what he calls a toxic waste dump, but John didn't get rid of it. It's still here.

He cushions his thumb in the curve of one of the familiar furrows, stroking it up and down, and listens to how it feels against his hand. He hears the smoothness of it over the words in his mouth.

"You were married. The biggest and most important day of your life, you said. That life was... supposed to be what you wanted."

He now understands the fallacy there, of course. Because John was _supposed_ to be happy, but it wasn't until he left Mary that it actually happened. And it's not Sherlock's own inability to comprehend human sentiment, because he's not the only one to see it. More than one person has told him that they haven't seen John look the way he does now in a very, very long time.

And now _everything's_ out in the open, and it's too late to take any of it back.

John lets out a long, heavy sigh, again covering his mouth with his hand. He looks away and his shoulders sag, whatever tension there was between them failing with it. "We've gone and cocked this up good and proper, haven't we?"

"It... would seem so."

"Sherlock-" John sits at the table with him, his hand reaching out and falling back in the same breath. "Just how much of what you've done these past few years has been for me?"

It's an uncomfortable question, and one Sherlock doesn't particularly want to answer. It frames everything the wrong way, it paints it all as a selfless sacrifice, and it makes his skin crawl. What was he meant to do? Ruin the wedding, after he'd already ruined the proposal and the two years before it? For that matter, sit back and watch Moriarty burn the city to the ground? It doesn't make him an angel to cross swords with the devil.

"I guess that answers my question, then," John says.

And he looks particularly gutted when he says it, like he's trying to smile but it's just not working, and Sherlock turns away, shrugging off John's hand. This is not what he wanted to happen tonight. "You're phrasing it unnecessarily charitably. It's not _important,_ John, I don't- how much misery have you endured on my account?"

"Er. I don't know. A lot, probably. Still would be nice if you'd not keep intestines next to the milk, though I'm not holding my breath." He shrugs easily, undeterred. "It's not a contest, Sherlock."

It's not. Sherlock still doesn't want to answer.

John's gaze slides downwards to rest on his chest. The scar is hidden underneath buttons and a suit jacket, he hasn't even seen it in weeks, but his eyes still darken to stormy grey.

The only course of action from here is to shut the door on this entire conversation. Sherlock should go back to his room right now, he should tell John he's tired and wants to rest, and John is a good doctor; John will let him do it. He should shut the door and turn out the lights and tomorrow change the subject permanently and that will be that.

He steeples his hands, searching for the words best designed to earn sympathy and draw out a medical concern. John likely wants this conversation over just as much as he does, so all he really needs is to give him the excuse, and then-

Then John catches one of his hands, tugging it down to the table between them, and looks at him with eyes so earnest and sincere it makes Sherlock want to run away.

"We both seem intent on making a mess of things, I think," he says. He does not let go. "So I'm going to try not doing that, this time. I figure if we can catch serial killers, we can manage at least that much. Sherlock- the most important day of my life was the day that I met you."

His stomach squirms.

Why can he face a madman with a gun on a rooftop easier than he can face a conversation in his own kitchen?

And why is John making him do this?

"I know I said otherwise before, but... the only reason I was even with Mary was because of you. Most of the time I was with her, I could only think about how much I missed you. How sorry I was that you were dead. And then you came back, and- you were such a bloody _bastard_ about it that I couldn't do anything but be mad at you. I got engaged because you seemed perfectly fine without me and I wanted to prove I could build a life without you, even after I realised I'd probably be happier breaking off the whole damn thing."

He'd suspected as much. He'd certainly realised it on his own; that this was what normal people _did,_ they got married, they moved out, they moved on, they lived a normal life. And he's only starting to fully grasp the mountainous depths, of just how deeply he'd hurt John, but Sherlock does understand what it's like to be hurt, now- and he understands how being so desperately hurt transforms into that breathless need for something _normal._

It's not pleasant to hear, no. That Sherlock had hurt John so badly, John's marriage had been an attempt to excise Sherlock out of his life, role of the best man or no. But it is what it is.

"John. I know-" He swallows, forcing himself to hold his eyes. John's hand on his _burns._ "I know an apology can not possibly be- adequate, but-"

"You've apologised. Numerous times. I don't need to hear it again." They sit again, because John makes him, and he still doesn't let him go. Now he seems almost hesitant, as if he's not sure he should say what comes next. "I think... I think I'm going to make a deduction."

He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. _"John."_

"Come on. I know I'm not as good at it as you, but I know you can suffer through it." But his smile, that wonderful, small little smile that Sherlock would and has done _anything_ for has gone brittle, and his fingers clench even tighter around his. "You wanted me to go back to Mary because you thought that was best for me. Even after finding out she was a bloody assassin, you still thought I'd be best off if I stayed with her- and I know you liked Mary, before, but that's not why, is it? It's not that you think Mary is all that great, after she bloody _shot you,_ but... you think I'm best off with anything who's not you."

Yes. He does. Obviously.

It's not even an arguable point, but Sherlock still keeps his mouth shut. John doesn't like it when he lies, and John won't like the truth here, either. There is no recourse but to stay silent, and he frowns across the room again, free hand flexing and clenching under the table so as to not rub at the scar.

He'd ruined John's life before. Why is John now looking at him like he's insane for trying to take precaution so that it does not happen again?

At his silence, John sighs, looking particularly displeased. He takes a moment to find the words, but as he does, he runs a thumb over the back of Sherlock's hand, and the feel of it is exquisite.

It'd be so easy to let himself have this.

"Sherlock," John says quietly. "Look at me, please."

He's no longer capable of telling John no, is he?

John's eyes are warm and bright, and as much as Sherlock's stomach is a knot, he looks like this is the easiest thing in the world. "You are... the singularly most amazing person I have ever or will ever meet. You make me happier than Mary ever could. I really don't know why you're so determined to not get that, why you're so determined that my happiness has to come at the expense of your own, but this, right here? This is all that I want." His throat jumps and suddenly he's splintering apart, almost desperate as he clutches his hands tighter, like he can't bear to let go. "I'm probably going to want to hit you the next time you lie to me, and we'll probably have a shouting match by this time next week, and whenever you next get hurt, I'm warning you now, it's not going to be pretty, but- I don't _care,_ Sherlock. None of this matters, I just want _you,_ I-"

His hands swallow Sherlock's, then move up his arms, tracing up to his shoulders and grasping his shirt to ruin. He stands and this time Sherlock's the one to follow him, and they stand there together with John clutching his shoulders, and he looks so torn that Sherlock wants to physically erase every bit of it from John's face. He wants to permanently erase anything that could ever make John look like that ever again.

But he can't do that, so he tilts his head, instead. "Am I teaching you to dance, again?" Because John's hands are on his shoulders, and maybe if he makes a joke, maybe if he pretends none of this ever happened, that's all it'll take to go away-

But this was the wrong thing to say, because now John's face falls, and he looks even worse than before. "Jesus-" He drops his head, his hands clenching, "you- Sherlock Holmes taught me how to waltz for my fucking _wedding,_ you posh bastard, and I still didn't- I am such an idiot. I am a blind, stupid idiot."

"John-"

John swallows the words in his own mouth, and kisses him hard, right there in the middle of their kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is welcome and always appreciated! Stay healthy!!! <3
> 
> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://problematic-ranowa.tumblr.com/)


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